1.4.2 – Does your university as a body provide financial assistance to the local community assisting the start-up of financially and socially sustainable businesses?
University Schemes for Financial Assistance to Start-ups
The University of El Oued provides crucial financial assistance to the local entrepreneurial community by operating a direct scheme that facilitates access to capital for certified start-ups. While the university does not typically provide cash grants directly from its budget, its institutional endorsement and support scheme serve as the primary conduit for entrepreneurs to secure external funding required for economic sustainability.
Mechanism of Financial Assistance: The Innovator Project Label
The key mechanism of financial assistance is the certification scheme managed by the University Business Incubator. The university assists student entrepreneurs in obtaining the Innovator Project Label (“Label”). This certification is highly valuable as it often unlocks national governmental start-up funds, tax benefits, and preferential funding schemes that are otherwise inaccessible to non-certified projects. By successfully supporting students like Aïcha Bernaoui and Farouk Zoghdi to obtain this institutional certification, the university directly enables access to the capital needed to launch financially sustainable businesses.
Direct Financial Facilitation and Networking
The university actively facilitates external private investment opportunities, which is a form of financial assistance to the local community. The evidence confirms two significant instances:
Investor Engagement: The “Business Café” event, overseen by the University-Economic Institutions Liaison Office, included the participation of an investor (Mr. Ben Ali Mohammed from Ben Ali Public Works Company). This event provides certified project holders with direct access to private capital and essential networking for financial backing.
2. Market Access and Partnership: The university orchestrated a partnership agreement between student Farouk Zoghdi, the creator of the “Al-Ghazal” electronic market platform (a certified start-up), and the Cap Distribution company. This agreement provides the student’s company with a guaranteed source of revenue (marketing and sale of the company’s products) and a trial phase, which is a vital form of seed-stage financial support and market sustainability.
The university’s scheme, therefore, operates as the official institutional mechanism that validates projects, secures access to state-backed capital, and actively brokers private investment, directly fulfilling the requirement to provide assistance that enables the financial sustainability of start-ups.